Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The Who and Why of the BATFE Scandal

Yesterday the House Oversight and Reform Committee held additional hearings in the ATF gunrunning scandal. In these hearings we learned that in addition to the ATF facilitating the smuggling of thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels - which were then used to kill hundreds of Mexicans and two US Federal Agents, the scandal extended even further:

1) In addition to BATFE - FBI, DEA, ICE and the IRS were all involved.2) Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer clearly knew all about the operation. Breuer has been described as Attorney General Eric Holder's "right hand man". Of course, Holder's boss is President Obama.3) All ATF personnel in Mexico were intentionally kept in the dark.4) A high ranking ATF manager has admitted to communicating details of the operation to a White House aide.5) The big question still is, "Who authorized this operation?"

With the news that Lanny Breuer knew of the operation in detail, we have moved from this being an operation supposedly authorized by ATF managers in the South West, to an operation authorized at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Would Lanny Breuer or for that matter Eric Holder authorize an operation that sent guns to criminals in a foreign country? Are either of both of these men willing to take the blame - and potentially the jail sentence?

We may very well find out soon, as house investigators are now focusing on the highest levels of the Justice department.

I am amazed that no one in the press - right or left - is applying a little critical thinking to this story.

As one committee member asked, "How cold this have ever worked?" He never got an answer.

Consider:

1) Without any coordination with Mexican authorities there was no way anyone in Mexico could have ever been arrested.

2) The only method ATF had of tracking guns in Mexico was to wait for them to be seized - usually after someone innocent was dead. The disdain for the lives of Mexican citizens was incredible.

3) Even when they were able to tie someone in Mexico to the guns, it was only a low level soldier - not someone high up in the cartel.

4) Even if this was the strategy, within the first year they had everything they were ever going to get. Why did they continue?

5) After DEMANDING that cooperating gun dealers sell large quantities of firearms to people they would have otherwise refused to sell even one gun to, ATF then named these very same gun dealers as "sources of crime guns" - citing the very sales they were ordered to make.

6) Given the fact that there was absolutely nothing to be gained investigatively be allowing guns to cross the boarder - what was the purpose?

7) President Obama has told gun groups that he is "working for gun control under the radar".- why are members of the press not asking what this means?

8) If it were not for the courage of the ATF whistle blowers, what kind of scandal would we have? Answer: We would have a dead boarder patrol agent, killed with a gun channeled from a US gun shop to the cartels. We would also have a list of thousands of guns from US retail channels, recovered in Mexico.

Conclusion: The only explanation that makes any sense at all is that the purpose of this program was to create justification for additional gun control laws here in the US. Yes, this is far fetched - yes this is hard to believe - but at this point it is the only explanation that makes any sense at all. The only other explanation is that ATF brass is totally incompetent and there for unable to tell after two years that the operation would not work. I find that even harder to believe.

Perhaps the most frightening thing about this is the evidence that people in our government were willing to kill people on both sides of the boarder in order to limit the gun rights of Americans. So much for the motive being to save lives. What was their true motive?